Chapter 16
Using Shopping Directories
and Retailers
In This Chapter
Finding the shopping directories
Selling directly from third-party merchant sites
Creating your datafeed files
I
f your Web site is an e-commerce site, you have more places at which you
can register. There’s a whole ’nother category of search engines — shop-
ping directories. These are giant catalogs of products. Search for digital
camera, for instance, and you see a page with pictures of cameras, their
prices, links to the appropriate Web sites, and so on. (A few of these services,
such as NexTag, list services as well as products.)
Most of these directories expect you to pay, but not all of them do. Froogle,
Google’s product directory, is completely free, for example. In general, the
ones that do expect you to pay charge only when someone clicks a link to
visit your site, so these directories may be worth experimenting with.
I begin this chapter by talking about the different systems that are available
and end by providing you with a little help on preparing your data for the
directories.
Finding the Shopping Directories
The following directories are probably the most important shopping directo-
ries to research. Go to each one and try to find information about signing up
and uploading your data. In some cases, that process is simple — the direc-
tory wants you to join, so you find a link that says something like Sell on Our
Site
or Mer
chant Info
. Sometimes you have to dig a little deeper because the
information is not clearly visible; you may need to use the Contact Us
link
and ask someone about signing up.
